Parent Dolls....

Every working mother suffers a certain degree of mummy guilt. Some feel a just a tinge of slightly annoying guilt, others a bone crushing, debilitating guilt that renders them incapable of stringing a sentence together at work that doesn’t revolve around the colour and consistency of their child’s nappy contents or a rundown of the cute things they said and did in the last 24-hours.
I remember back in the olden days when it our family consisted of us and just the oldest boy. I cried every day when I left him with his childminder. I thought about him the entire time I was at work. I showered him with stuff and crammed a head-spinning itinerary of activities into our weekend to try and counteract the fact that I was a certified card carrying she-devil Monday to Friday and went out to work for a living.
Well, rest easy, us mums need worry no more. Our troubles are officially over. The Americans have come up with the answer – Parent Dolls.
‘The Parent Doll is You!’ claims the website. ‘It’s your face and your voice put into a friendly, warm-hearted plush doll for your child to cherish’.
Wow.
So you put a picture of yourself in the faceplate and automatically the doll looks exactly like you. Granted it’s a stuffed, tiny, cloth version of you with an inkjet printed face and a dodgy dress sense but it’s still you.
You can even make the doll sound like you. The idea is that the child carries the Parent Doll around all day, presses a button when he needs reassurance and hears Mum’s voice.
You squash the dolls tummy and speak into her hand to leave an eight-minute message. Something along the lines of ‘Hello there little Jimmy. I’m at work, I miss you terribly, oh how I love you madly. While I’m at work this doll – which, I’m sure you’ll concur, actually looks remarkably like me, spongy biscuit-shaped hair and all – will carry out all my mummy duties. Dolly Mummy won’t be able to cook or clean or change nappies and the like but she does do a cracking rendition of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. So you’ll be super grand. Byeee!’
Yes that’s what ordinary parents would probably say. If I had to leave an eight-minute message for my two year old, I wouldn’t waste it pointlessly singing Mary Had a Little Lamb. If I’m going to be replaced by an inanimate cloth dolly, I’m going to make her work for her keep.
My message would go a little something like this…
‘Hello Finnbo, my lovely little curly-haired lunatic. I’ve escaped and am at work. Don’t touch that! Don’t eat that! For the love of God man, stop drinking coffee! Pot Pourri is for smelling, not consuming. Don’t draw on those walls you little….Don’t stick your fingers in your sister’s eyes. Toilet business is strictly confined to the toilet, please refrain from needless watering of the plants. Stop with all the rubbing yoghurt on the bloody windows. Refrain from sticking bananas in the DVD player. Cease using my laptop to hammer the plastic nails into Bob the Builder’s workbench. Stop feeding toilet paper into the CD player on my iMac. Stop washing your hair in the toilet. I love you little man. I’ll be home soon! Byeee!!’
Infact I might just put an order in for two of these dolls. One for the little man, one for the husband. I couldn’t, hand on heart, turn my back on the chance to record an entire eight minutes of nagging for the husband.
‘I can smell cigarettes off your coat. Have you been smoking? Have a salad with that panini, NOT chips. When are you going to finish painting that wardrobe in Caolan’s bedroom? You put the first coat on six years ago. It is bound to be dry by now. The garage door needs oiled immediately. That grass needs cut. You keep on walking past that bun shop mister, don’t even thing about stopping. Get your hair cut, you hippy. Stop flirting with that middle-aged woman in the café who gives you double portions of cheesecake. OK. Love you, byeee!’
The trouble is with these things is that you can take the batteries out or bury them under the pile of washing in the hotpress when the nagging gets too intense.
I think the real thing is much better.
www.parentdoll.com